


A Storm of Butterflies

by Starrie_Wolf



Series: Starrie's Yuletide Gifts 2019 [5]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Gen, Interlude, character introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22011577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrie_Wolf/pseuds/Starrie_Wolf
Summary: Isshin doesn’t even hear about it until it has already gone down.For him, that’s the absolutely worst part about their grand plan to take down Aizen: the fact that he can’t be kept in the loop like the other four are, because he’s the backup plan, their last line of defence should everything crash and burn.[Interlude set directly after TBE chapter 11]
Series: Starrie's Yuletide Gifts 2019 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579774
Comments: 5
Kudos: 138





	A Storm of Butterflies

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: A oneshot for The Butterfly Effect, but from the perspective of Isshin, and how he's dealing with everything, given that he can't really afford to interact with any of the other time travelers too much (esp because if the whole little conspiracy is found by aizen he won't be involved and wouldn't sink with the others.)
> 
> Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, dear anon!

It’s a normal day, or so Isshin thought at first. He comes home later than usual, because his current lieutenant is scatter-brained and forgot to readjust their patrol squads to account for the change in their division’s manpower. Which is the fancy term they put on their paperwork, because Central 46 likes to sit in their ivory towers and pretend they are looking at retirement rates instead of the casualty rate.

It’s a fucking myth that shinigami are allowed to retire, anyway. Urahara would know all about that, with that little prison he runs, filled to the brim with disillusioned Rukongai-born shinigami who had wanted to walk away.

You die on the job, or you wish you were dead. Unless you’re a noble, in good standing – which usually means at least seated officer – and have submitted a request for permission to retire in order to raise the next-generation of shinigami.

The Onmitsukidō is tasked with keeping an eye on _that_ too.

In fact, he walks into dinner so late, he almost misses Kaien’s announcement that the Shiba are, henceforth, boycotting the Hōjō clan – that in fact there is an entire _coalition_ of clans who are boycotting the Hōjō, including all five Great Noble Houses and their retainers.

Hōjō. He just heard that name not three days ago, when a messenger had arrived to inform him of the untimely demise of one of his unseated shinigami members. Due to a Hollow attack on her way home, Isshin remembered. He had put her name down on the casualty – sorry, _manpower reassignment_ – list for that month and then forgotten all about it in his never-ending attempt to finish the job of two senior officers.

Getting the chance to make amends is a rare gift he never expected to receive, but Isshin has no idea how he even survived before Rangiku.

He refocuses just in time to catch snippets of conversation going on at the other tables, about how there had to have been something wrong with the reports, how the Shihōin has revealed that the Onmitsukidō had been hosting training exercises in the area and there definitely hadn’t been any Hollows there at that time.

 _What a stroke of luck_ , they chattered, oblivious to Isshin’s growing discomfort. Everyone knows that Hollows are occasionally used as convenient scapegoats for murder, but no one has even been able to prove it.

Whatever it is, it’s not luck. Isshin can’t say he’s had much contact with Urahara and Shihōin before his encounter in Naruki City, but he’s heard stories over the years. This incident has Urahara’s fingerprints all over it.

Ichigo had never asked Isshin about it, but his son is more observant that he is often given credit for. There is no way he missed the fact that Isshin – in fact, all the older shinigami, save for Shihōin – display an inherent wariness of Urahara that is completely at odds with the idiot mask he wears now. He must’ve guessed, at the very least, that the Urahara whom he knows is a completely different person from the Urahara whom Isshin had known.

And yet, he trusts Urahara.

Isshin doesn’t trust Urahara, but he trusts his son. Ichigo has always had a knack for seeing through all of a person’s masks down to their very core, and for converting others to his point of view. It’s a point in fact that just about all of his shinigami friends had tried to kill him at least once before.

He doesn’t remember this boycott happening the last time, which means it has something to do with Ichigo, somehow. Urahara and Shihōin won’t go to this much trouble for just anyone. And if it’s Ichigo, then Isshin trusts that he has a good reason for excommunicating an entire clan.

This might not have been the kind of future he had envisioned for his son, but at least Ichigo is healthy, happy, doing something he believes in, and has people around him to support him wholeheartedly in his endeavours.

That’s all a parent can hope for.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Discord (spoiler warning, I do a lot of live-writing here)](https://discord.gg/8yJVmbD) | [Tumblr](http://starriewolf.tumblr.com)


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